


We Build with Hammers and Hacksaws

by Upupanyway



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Gen, Getting Back Together, Post-Canon, Rebuilding, They love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:02:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22072972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Upupanyway/pseuds/Upupanyway
Summary: Matt Murdock is alive to the world again, and he finds that he has not been abandoned.
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Matt Murdock & Franklin "Foggy" Nelson & Karen Page, Matt Murdock & Karen Page, all platonic or pre-romantic if you squint
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58
Collections: DDE’s 2020 New Year’s Day Exchange





	We Build with Hammers and Hacksaws

**Author's Note:**

  * For [a_silver_sun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_silver_sun/gifts).



> Building is a violent act. It is the stuff of taking things apart and re-shaping it to become something greater and more beautiful than it was before. Creation is violence, and it is beautiful.

Salami, salty and hearty, fills the office. It's not a waft, but a sort of ingrainedness that comes from the seeping and soaking and staying of something in a space.

It smells like how his old memories of Foggy smell, back in the early days. It grew stronger around the holidays, when he would visit his family; an almost forgotten smell that is also instantly familiar when he is confronted with it. Like finding a small hole, warm and comfortable, that fit his dimensions exactly, he recognizes it as his. This is the smell to which Matt belongs, as it has chased and plagued him for such a long while.

The layout of the new office shakes him. It's smaller, for one, and the dizzying heat saturates and intensified everything. On top of that, it's intimate, with three desks facing each other along the three walls without the door. A small washroom to one side, and an open kitchenette in a nook beside it just left of the entrance. A storage cabinet. Two filing cabinets. Karen and Foggy, leaning on one of the desks, making small talk and eating sausage rolls.

Everything is strange about the situation. Not a week ago, he was officially dead. Not a week ago, his senses were swimming in nothing but chilled violence. His mind was full of resentment and spite, and he had turned from God, foolishly thinking he had been abandoned.

He feels holier today. It's jarring, like that final chapter of Job, when the things he had lost had been so quickly compensated for, though not replaced. How had Job not bursted from the contrast? How had his embittered heart not exploded from the sudden pressure, the inverse rushing of love into it?

Shakily, he breathes out before he enters. He has to remind himself that these are his friends, people he loves. People who love him.

"Morning, Matt," Karen greets. A waft of warm coffee breath hits him in the nose. Her familiar mix of perfumes and her home comfort him. She uses a different shampoo, and her hair is tied back, or perhaps it is shorter. He thinks she feels more mature now, but doesn't grief change a person? Had they not all circled back to each other, different and more themselves than they were all those years ago, young and all in love with the idea the others represented rather than the flawed and perfect beings they truly were?

"Morning," he echoes. He goes to hug her, light and affectionate, though they linger, realizing all the months of having been lost to each other.

"You smell the salami, too, right?" she asks, a little wetly and unsteady. They would have to learn each other's presences again, their humours.

Still, Matt laughs. "Oh, you have no idea. It's like an assault on all my senses, and I'm not quite sure he didn't suggest this place just to spite me."

"You'd deserve it," she says, and it's pained, though it's teasing.

Matt doesn't disagree.

"Ready for the redux, partners?" Foggy cuts in. He claps Matt on the back where before, they might have hugged.

"Of course!" she says, and Matt nods along. "What's our client list like?"

"Well, there are the cases I was working on at HC&B. All the ones who wanted to stick with me, anyway. We can also look into the Nadeems and what we can do for them."

"There's a lot of crime happening all the time, I'm sure we'll be fine," says Matt, trying for comforting.

"Any chance you could hand out business cards when you're out in costume?" Karen jokes. She crosses her arms.

Matt smiles at her, appreciates her trying to incorporate his various identities. It eases something in Matt, as if he is closer to being solid and whole in front of them.

"Actually, that might not be such a bad idea. I had some new ones printed, if you guys wanna check them out," Foggy offers. His voice is steady and friendly, but there's an excited hum to his heartbeat that makes Matt feel warm and cared about.

Foggy reaches into a rustling cloth bag and takes out a small box. He opens it carefully, and hands one to Matt and Karen each.

He feels it, braille and ink. "Nelson, Murdock and Page," it reads, right across the top. Just below it is the same, inked in a serious font. Near the bottom, their office number and client email.

"It could use some flair," Karen notes, though she reaches out and holds onto Foggy's hand. 

"Well, I've only printed a hundred, so thank god you're here."

"That's optimistic of you," she hums digging a finger into Foggy's side and making him yelp. He wonders what they had gotten up to in the time he had been dead, how close their grief made them, and irrationally, he is jealous of their emotional proximity. "No, really. These are great. Let me know when you print the next batch." 

"Will do," he says, smiling (and Matt knows what Foggy's smiles sound like. He had nearly forgotten, but he knows.) She kisses Foggy on the cheek easily and takes a seat at the far desk. Then, he turns to him. "I hope you don't mind that we've already picked desks. You were last in, so we got dibs."

"Seems fair," Matt says. He reached over for Foggy's hand like Karen had moment prior, though he stops, suddenly anxious that he wouldn't be allowed.

Foggy, who never hesitates, takes him by the hand instead, guiding him to the desk in the middle, along their shortest wall and by the window.

"This one's yours," Foggy tells him. Matt settles into his desk and feels around the desk for his stuff. All of it is old and unused, but they're his.

His fingers meet his refreshable braille display and he nearly weeps. "You kept this?"

"Well, it cost me a lot of money straight out of law school, so I wasn't quite eager to pawn it off as soon as you died."

Another old feeling takes him, and he is confronted with the fervor with which he loves Foggy, pure and clean. No wooing, no seduction, no declarations in the dark and mysterious night. Matt wants to bury himself in Foggy and make a shelter there.

"Did you think I'd be back?"

"Sometimes. But mostly, it reminded me of you, and I wasn't ready to let that go."

"Foggy-" he starts, though he doesn't know how to continue.

"None of that, Murdock." Foggy chides, a hand on Matt's shoulder. "You're my best friend, and you weren't gone long enough for me to forget that."

"It was a little pathetic," Karen says with a warm snicker.

"She says as if she wasn't keeping up rent for a dead guy," counters Foggy. He opens the window behind Matt and lets some of the air in, or out. He merges their little bubble with the whole of New York, its smells and sounds unbarricaded now.

"You guys," Matt says with a welling gratitude. Still, he can't say anything.

And again, Foggy comes to him and steadies him with a hand, this time on his jaw as he kneels down to meet Matt, face to face.

"It's okay, take your time. Just don't push us out or away, ever again. No more secrets, and we communicate when we're going through any hardships, alright?"

"I'm just a little overwhelmed."

"I get that," Foggy says, and he hugs him for a long time.

Eventually, Karen joins them, and Matt is surprised to learn that her face had been wet with tears for them.

"Don't die again," she warns him with a knock of her head to his.

And they hold him. They breathe life into Matt as they do so, and he feels more solid by the second. If he can touch, if he can be touched by these people who love him so deeply, how could he be anything other than alive? What can he do but love them back?

**Author's Note:**

> for the DD gift exchange 2020! for @a_silver_sun, for prompt "A friendship fic: at the end of season 3, Matt's ready to return to his life, both personal and professional, move back into his place, and reconnect with friends and loved ones."
> 
> In hindsight, I feel like this could have been way longer, and I realize that Matt probably has more people in his life than these guys, and I wanna talk about Maggie, but I can't get a scene in my head other than Matt's mom literally being like "get a job, why do you still live at home you have a law degree and you're like 30?"


End file.
